Vincenzo Nibali
enters stage 8 with a lead of 2:37 over Alberto Contador.

Kwiatkowski trails
Nibali by :50; he is Nibali's closest GC threat.

Van Den Broeck trails
by 1:45; Porte by 1:54; Talansky by 2:05; Valverde, Bardet, and Rui Costa all trail
Nibali by 2:11; Mollema is at 2:27; then Contador at 2:37; Van Garderen by
3:14; Pinot by 3:24; and Peraud is at 3:29.

Stage 8 Profile

Peter Sagan comes
into the stage with a lead of over 100 points in the points jersey competition.
Will he go for it at the finish today? He has shown that he is capable of
impressive results on punchy finishes as well as flat sprints.Sagan has finished in the top 5 on
every stage so far. No rider has finished the first seven stages with all
top-ten finishes since 1930**.

Purito Rodriguez
would normally eat up today's race profile, but he seems to still be building
form. He has not raced since crashing out of the Giro d'Italia in mid-May.

This is a good
finish for Valverde, but he may have to defer to the break unless the peloton
chooses to chase down the break today.

To the road...

Fast and furious
start;

Breaks aren't
taking.

Bart De Clercq
(LTB) has abandoned the race (ankle).

*~km35: Sylvain
Chavanel (IAM) and Niki Terpstra (OPQ) get away.

Simon Yates, Adrien
Petit, and Blel Kadri join the 2 up front to form a 5-man breakaway group.

Friday, July 11, 2014

Just two cat-4's on
the course, both inside the last 20k. The last is a short, steep climb with a fast
descent, and it tops out just 5k before the finish. Looks like a tempting spot
for a late attack, but I think several sprinters should make it over to contest
the stage--assuming the break doesn't succeed.

Peter Sagan is a
good pick today. I like Samuel Dumoulin as a dark-horse pick.

Stage 7 profile

*Today's finish
town of Nancy was the sight of some race carnage on stage 6 of the Tour back in
2005, when a crash up front led to a huge pile-up of riders on a wet curve
running into the finish. Then 25-year-old Fassa Bartolo rider, Lorenzo Bernucci
became the unlikely benefactor of the metal, rubber and flesh apocalypse behind
him, when he magically escaped the pile-up and sprinted ahead to take one of
his two career race wins--and certainly the biggest of his career.

Lorenzo Bernucci was lucky in Nancy in 2005

Two years later,
while riding for T-Mobile, Bernucci tested positive for a banned substance, and
received a one-year ban. In 2010 he was caught with doping substances in his
house, and is still now serving a five-year ban that is due to end in early
2016, when he will be 36.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

2 cat-4 climbs on
the course. Nine traffic circles to navigate in the finale.

Cloudy at
start/mostly rainy later; 60 f; frequent rain.

Stage 6 profile

DNS: Richeze (LAM)

Stage 6 on the map

Today the race
commemorates 100 years since the start of World War I. Today's route covers
ground that saw a lot of military misery a hundred years ago. The peloton will
pass several landmarks, cemeteries and memorial sites on the way to Reims.

Yesterday more than
40 riders are reported to have crashed. Perhaps surprisingly, Froome was the
only abandon on stage 5. So, no one who crashed on the cobbles was forced to
abandon the race. And, as I said yesterday, most of the crashes happened on the
wet traffic circles. So I refute any argument that rain-soaked, slick cobbles
are too dangerous to be included in the French grand tour. The streets and the
roundabouts were much more perilous yesterday. Does anybody like those
roundabouts?

My girlfriend,
Emily pointed out that the images of the peloton riding through the roundabouts
has become sort of iconic in cycling broadcasting; so maybe they belong as much
to the cycling aesthetic as cobblestones. It's a point I had not considered. I
will put up a poll asking who thinks the cobblestones should be excluded from
the Tour De France...

The rain will
strike fear into some riders, but defending champion Chris Froome would have
welcomed the cancelation of the two cobbled sections, as he came out with his left
wrist wrapped in an ace bandage, possibly around a brace, as a result of his
crash early yesterday.

The 2 omitted
sections are reported to have been particularly affected by the extensive rain,
being assessed as too flooded to ride through.

The big guys get
themselves near the front as the flag drops for the official start.

Tony Martin starts
with the gas on...Ben King of Garmin-Sharp then accelerates off the front. The
chase is on, right from the start.

-140k: By km15 the
break has built a 1:00 lead over the peloton. 2 chasers are in between at +:30.

*-120k: Chris Froome is picking himself up from the
tarmac again. His kit is torn a bit, so you can see yellow through holes in his
rain jacket. He is chasing back on with Daniel Oss (BMC) and a Cofidis rider.
An FDJ rider had also gone down. After a km or two, SKY riders start dropping
back to help pace Froome back up to the peloton.

A low fence had
appeared suddenly in the left side of the road, separating off a meter or so of
road as a shoulder from car traffic. Its presence was not well marked, and
that's what caused the Froome crash.

Stalwart fans waiting by one of today's seven cobbled sections

-115k: The 9
escapees' lead is up to 1:32. The Froome chase group is about :40 behind the
peloton.

*Report of another
crash, now in the front group. No TV footage yet.

Still about 50k to
go before they reach the pavé.

Tony Martin was a crash victim in the lead
group. Acevedo was also down. Their
wheels slipped out on a roundabout. They are both up and chasing.

The lead group is
now 7 riders.

Froome finally approaches
the rear of the peloton.

Another crash in
the peloton: C. Pineau of FDJ; a Cofidis rider, and Kristoff also chasing back
on after incidents.

-95k: Lead is now 2:16.

Burghardt has dropped back into the peloton from the break.

Teams Cannondale
and Astana lead the peloton through Roubaix.

-80k: The lead
approaches 3:00.

BMC, Garmin and
Saxo moving up toward the front of the peloton.

The wet roads are
causing more crashes, almost every roundabout, it seems, is claiming victims..

3 more go down on
another roundabout, including Kittel,
a Garmin rider, and another.

-75k: Demare hits the deck.

-70k: Another
roundabout claims several victims, including Kiryienka, Valverde, and
Van Garderen. Everyone is trying to
be as close to the front as they can get, as the cobbles are about to
commence...

Report: Valverde is
now riding his teammate JJ Rojas' bike, after the crash.

*-67k: CHRIS FROOME is down again! He is
shaking his head. It does not look good for the overall favorite. He is holding
the bandaged wrist and shaking his head as his team car finally arrives.
Another teammate is with him, also with a tattered kit. Froome pulls off his
shades and his eyes are full of pain and defeat. Froome is abandoning the Tour
just before the first cobbled section on stage 5

-66k: The 7 leaders
are approaching the first cobbled section, the Carrefour de l'Arbe.

It is still
raining, the pave is soaked, and both sides of the "road" are long
trenches of water waiting to bathe the unsteady in mud.

The peloton hit the
first pave 1:58 behind the 7 leaders.

The lead is still
1:56 as the peloton come off the Carrefour de l'Arbe.

The entire Movistar
team is pacing Valverde and some others back up. Van Garderen is in a small
group just ahead.

Froome was not enjoying last year's good luck out there today

km97 (Templeuve):
The leaders go through the Intermediate Sprint point, led by Westra.

-48k: Hayman and
Clarke (OGE) are leading the escapees over the second cobbled section, 1:20 ahead
of the chasing peloton.

Taaramae loses
contact with the other escapees.

6 leaders now.

The peloton is
taking a pounding on this section. Positions are increasingly difficult to
defend... splits are forming all over.

-50k: Nibali survives in a small group with 3
Astana teammates, as well as Talansky,
Cancellara, Langeveld, 2 Belkin riders (Vanmarcke
and Boom), Cyril Lemoine with 2 COF teammates, 2 or 3
OPQ riders (maybe Kwiatkowski, Bakelants? Renshaw...), and a few others. Maybe 27 guys in that group right now.

Not too far behind,
about :40 back, Alberto Contador's
group is chasing the Nibali group.

Chris Froome will not be able to defend his title

A lotto rider (Lars
Bak, maybe) at the front of the Nibali group has some choice words for Astana,
probably asking them to work harder to chase.

*-40k: The 6
leaders up the road are Tony Martin for OPQ, Clarke and Hayman for OGE, Tony
Gallopin (LTB), Sam Dumoulin (ALM), and Lieuwe Westra (AST). They lead by about
:50

Garmin climber
Janier Acevedo is said to be several minutes off the back, suffering.

Onto the next
cobbled section (Bersée, 1.4k):

-39k: Team Lotto
leader Jurgen Van Den Broeck
("VDB") skids off the road on a cobbled left curve,. He summersaults into
a backside endo into the spectators, down a ditch and onto the grass. It looked
dramatic, but I think he should be ok. He has had some bad luck in some big
races.

Tony Martin had safely
led the leading group of 6 around that bend with great caution.

*Sep Vanmarcke, who had
been riding second wheel behind VDB, watched the Lotto rider tumble, and takes
the corner masterfully. He then attacks with deliberate ambition, bringing
Belkin teammate Lars Boom along for
the ride.

Sagan and Cancellara

[Vanmarcke finished
4th at Paris-Roubaix this year, and 2nd last year; Boom was 6th at Roubaix in
2012, and has made top 15 a few times.]

Talansky crashed head-on into a pair of spectators on the same curve
that took out VDB, just a few meters behind the Lotto rider.

The crashes formed
splits in the chase group. Nibali is
riding himself up through the smaller groups of riders on the road, passing his
own teammates on the way forward.

-37.5k: Boom is now
pacing Vanmarcke in a concerted chase effort.The 6 leaders can't be more than :30 ahead.

-36.6k: Nibali has
to hop over an Astana teammate who crashed on a wet right turn in the road.
Heinrich Haussler (IAM)also went
down on the same spot.

Lotto's Jurgen Van Den Broeck missed a turn and took a tumble

A few kms later, Dumoulin goes down on a roundabout
curve. Just ahead of him in the lead group, Gallopin had to clip out of his
left pedal to keep his balance on the same curve.

*The lead group is
down to 4 riders: Clarke and Hayman, Martin and Gallopin.

I did not see
Westra drop back to the Nibali group.

*Vanmarcke had
punctured; the Belkin duo is back with the Nibali group now.

*-28k: The Nibali
group catches the 4 breakaway leaders, to form a new front group of about 16
riders.

The large Contador,
Valverde, Van Garderen group is chasing less than a minute behind.

The Talansky group
of about 10-15 riders (Chase 1) is chasing at about +:40;

The much larger
Contador, Roche, TVG, Valverde, Rui Costa, Richie Porte group (Chase 2) is at
about +1:17.

Boom comes off the
4th cobbled section with a slight gap. Other riders are stretched out in a gapped
single file behind him. Sagan, Kwiatkowski and Fuglsang are among them.

[It is unlikely
that Nibali is riding to keep the yellow jersey, but rather had a plan to stay
up front to keep out of trouble. He is riding a great stage, and may even gain
time on his rivals today.]

Nibali did his best to stay up front all day

*-20k: Peter Sagan
leads the front group (containing the Maillot Jaune, Nibali) onto the short,
3rd-to-last section of pavé. They come together on the back end of the cobbles
with about 12 or 13 riders in front.

The small Talansky
group is chasing at about +1:30;

The Contador GC
peloton is almost :30 behind those chasers. So Contador is currently about two
minutes behind Nibali.

Another dozen
riders trail the GC peloton by a few more seconds.

-17.3km: JC Peraud has another mechanical. Gets a slow
wheel change.

-15k: The leaders
are on the penultimate cobbled section at Wandignies. It is long, at 3.7k.

Cancellara is still in there with the front group. Renshaw is there, too.

Westra has been
doing a lot of work driving in the front group.

Geraint Thomas and Richie Porte for SKY jump out of the Contador group, trying to bridge up
to the first chase group, at least.

-13k: *Nibali,
Fuglsang and Westra are keeping up a hard pace in front. Westra accelerates to
pull Nibali away from his rivals behind. The others are losing their wheels.
Some are frantically pedaling to catch up.

-12k: So far, only
Lars Boom has gotten on with the
Astana attack.

-11k: *The 4
leaders on the road at -10k are: Nibali,
Fuglsang and Westra for Astana, and Boom
for Belkin.

Hayman, Cancellara,
Sagan and Lemoine are together chasing a few seconds behind the four leaders.

Geraint Thomas paced Richie Porte up

A Movistar rider has crashed off the pavé
and into a spectator, and the mud.

-10k: One cobbled
section remains...

Thomas has pulled
Porte up to the Talansky chase group, now about 11 or 12 riders strong. Also
with them are 2 Astana riders, a Cannondale, an ALM, a COF... Michal
Kwiatkowski, Romain Bardet...

Contador, Van
Garderen, Rui Costa and Valverde still seem to be riding together, about 2:20
behind the leaders.

-9k: *Nibali has
lost one teammate, Westra. Westra was a beast today. He ought to win Most Aggro
Rider.

Westra drops back
into the first chase group with Cancy and Sagan.

-8k: *The lead
group is now 3: Nibali, Fuglsang, and Boom.

-7k: The 3 leaders
are holding :14 over the first 5 chasers.

*-6.7k: The 3
leaders attack the last section of pave.

Boom begins to gain
a gap on Nibali, who is flying over the pavé with Fuglsang on his tail.

-5k: Boom has a
5-second gap over the 2 Astana boys a sthey come off the last cobbled section.

-3k: Boom can
surely taste the possible victory by now. His face shows the pain and suffering
and focus of a man possessed.

The finish line
will come at the entrance to the Arenberg Forest...

GC contenders are
spread out down the road, doing their personal best to stay in contention.

-1k: Under the red
kite, Lars Boom continues to push the pedals with everything he has.

He turns
around at -500m, then raises his hand once, turns around again to make sure
it's for real, and starts to celebrate a fantastic win with fist pumps, a huge
grin, and raised arms.

Boom leading Fuglsang and Nibali over the last cobbled section

Boom wins the
dreaded day with an average speed of 47 kph. Very impressive.

Nibali is the big
winner of the day among the GC men.

Appropriately, Lieuwe
Westra is crowned Most Aggressive Rider of the day.

It seemed more
crashes occurred on the paved roads rather than the cobbles--though the pavé
did claim its share of victims, too. The roundabouts were the biggest culprits
on this cool, rainy day, so great bike-handling was required to survive. Astana
leader Vincenzo Nibali and his lieutenants played it as well as anyone could.

Lars Boom ruled the day

Not only did
Vincenzo Nibali put on a bike-handling clinic and finish third today, but he
increased his lead over all of his major rivals. Alberto Contador was perhaps
the biggest loser of the day (after Froome, of course), the Spaniard conceding
2:35 to Nibali. Bauke Mollema and Jean-Christophe Peraud were two other GC
hopefuls who took a licking out on the cobbled roads today.

Van Den Broeck
recovered from his dramatic tumble to finish 16th, losing 1:43 to Nibali, but
gaining a few precious seconds on the other big guns.

Michal Kwiatkowski
performed very well, gaining 1:21 on his closest White Jersey overall
contender, Romain Bardet. MK also gained over a minute on most of the other top
GC contenders.

Time lost to
Nibali today (the amount of time Nibali gained on each of the following
potential GC competitors):

Kwiatkowski: :48

Van Den Broeck 1:43

Porte1:52

Talansky 2:03

Pinot 2:09

Rui Costa 2:09

Valverde 2:09

Bardet 2:09

First-time TDF stage winner 28-year-old, Lars Boom

Van Garderen 2:09

Mollema 2:25

Contador2:35

Konig 3:27

Peraud 3:27

Zubeldia 3:57

Rolland 3:57

Horner 3:57

F. Schleck 7:51

Navarro 22:21

Purito Rodriguez
22:21

Most of the top
domestiques (like Rogers, Roche and Majka for Contador) also conceded very
large chunks of time, so before the race even hits the mountains, few if any
teams have more than one top GC hopeful. Nibali and Fuglsang are currently
sitting pretty, in case anything should happen to Nibali and Astana need an
alternative; but Fuglsang will more likely sacrifice all to lead Nibali through
the mountains when the time comes.

**[I do not accept
any arguments that the cobbles do not belong in the Tour De France, even if it rains. First, the cobbles are
a very characteristic and traditional facet of racing in France. Second,
looking at today's carnage, it is obvious that most of the crashes occurred on
the "normal" roads. It wasn't the pavé that was the danger, it was the
rain--and those awful traffic circles.

And I did not see many more crashes today on the wet pavé than I
usually see when it is dry. The riders are in a race, they can choose how fast
they want to take any stretch of road--or cobbles, or turns, or descents. No
one is forcing them to ride faster than they feel is safe. Risk-taking is one
of many ways that champions use to enhance their advantage, in every kind of
competition.]